Happy Birthday Dad
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Happy Birthday Dad
Another year full of life
living, creating, smiles, laughs
many miles explored
problems solved, projects finished
the best gift to this family
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Lights, Family, Food
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It’s the lights I love
during winter holidays
always bright, cheery
coloring the gray landscape
enhancing the snow’s beauty
or making up for its lack
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Name Changes
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Funny how scientists can change
names of some plants in an instant
wonder if the plants think it’s strange
nomenclature inconsistent
wonder if they are resistant
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Lemons I Grew Myself
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Sweet delicious and lemony
much larger than those at the store
straight from my living room tree
after waiting a year or more
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I mistakenly referred to these as limes in an earlier poem… turns out they are enormous lemons!
Remember Who You Wanted to Be
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Remember the vivid dreams of youth
Who you did and did not want to be
You followed your heart which was the truth
wanted to fly, teach, cook, surf the sea
To make real change in the voting booth
Be loved, be calm, be true, be free
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(A Bumper Sticker Poem)
Bumper Sticker Poems – a form I created, inspired by cento and golden shovel poetry, with the following guidelines:
This Rain Shoulda Been Snow
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This rain shoulda been snow
It’s December 20
But it’s sixty degrees
It is disconcerting
I worry for the trees
*
This rain shoulda been snow
The creeks rise once again
noisily tumbling
behind the town’s facade
groaning grumbling
*
this rain shoulda been snow
feet accumulating
softly and silently
muting society –
the rains acts violently
*
This rain shoulda been snow
hoping winter gets cold
that the cold hard rains stop
and the snow starts at last
Please send flake over drop
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Traditions (Santa Cookies)
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Unfold the stiff yellowed recipe in your mom’s handwriting from the box of the vintage icing gun
Blend the shortening you don’t use for anything else with bleached flour you don’t use for anything else
because this is tradition, and you’ve tried it other ways and though they are your own they don’t take you back
to the warm crowded kitchen with grandma and mom and your sisters.
Pat the cold dough into the vintage plastic mold filled with the chemicals they don’t put in plastics anymore
Dust, roll, press, pat release onto the baking sheet.
Paint the faces in the specific order designed to avoid red sugar sprinkles in the icing eyebrows
Give them away to everyone you care about.
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Winter
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Whose woods these are I think I know
One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow
On a clear winter’s evening the crescent moon and the round squirrels nest in the bare oak all equal planets
Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold
Suddenly, in every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be
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Lines from the following poems about winter:
Winter Trees – William Carlos Williams
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
The Snow Man – Wallace Stevens
A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches
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There is little better than a
winter night with a hearty meal, some select liquid
and your hunny with the full moon
creating shadows in the house as it moves
across the sky, dancing with the stars gently
and we full and bundled up slip among
bare trees over crisp leaves and cold water, the
night early and still cooling, no night will be as long
holding hands nearly off balance we watch through the bare branches
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A Golden Shovel Poem based on Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams
The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things
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The time has arrived to celebrate
Best time of the year, some disagree
Things like cold, snow and short days dissuade
In fact I will not live without it
Life without winter cannot be great
Aren’t these humid summer months crappy?
Things are best with snowflakes, I’m afraid.
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(A Bumper Sticker Poem)
Bumper Sticker Poems – a form I created, inspired by cento and golden shovel poetry, with the following guidelines:
A Picture and a Poem 